


lonely spinsters, stale bagels, and advanced calculus

by mildlydiscouraging



Series: pretty sounds [1]
Category: Bandom, Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Band, Kinda, M/M, Online Dating, Pen Pals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-10
Updated: 2015-06-10
Packaged: 2018-04-03 05:55:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4089508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mildlydiscouraging/pseuds/mildlydiscouraging
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All those phone calls with his mother asking if he’s met someone, all those engagement parties and baby showers of friends, all of it’s been building up inside of him, and to what? </p><p>Getting blackout drunk and signing up for eHarmony, apparently.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lonely spinsters, stale bagels, and advanced calculus

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alvaughn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alvaughn/gifts).



> one time bo dm'd me. this was gonna b longer but i think that about sums it up.
> 
> the token song for this fic is probably "[selene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMzjE4eCul8)" by imagine dragons, since i listened to it twelve million times while writing this. or anything off that album, i love night visions.

Tyler doesn’t know why he did it. Or when he did it. Or what he even did.

He remembers going out to drink with Jenna and Mark the night before, playing a lot of Foosball, but after that it’s all a blur. Until he wakes up with three new emails in his inbox, all from different companies with the subject line something like, “Welcome Tyler! Check out these available singles in your area!”

“Did you sign me up for a bunch of dating sites last night?” Tyler asks the phone wedged between his head and his shoulder. The only place he gets decent reception in his house is right over the kitchen sink, so he figures he might as well do the dishes while piecing together last night.

“Yeah,” Jenna’s response was delayed and full of static and he needs to get a better service plan but he’s broke, “After around drink four you started getting really mopey and stole our phones so you could sign up for every online dating service ever created.”

Tyler leans his head against the cabinet and sighs, almost dropping the slippery plate he’s holding into the sink. All those phone calls with his mother asking if he’s met someone, all those engagement parties and baby showers of friends, all of it’s been building up inside of him, and to what?

Getting blackout drunk and signing up for eHarmony, apparently.

“At least they were free?” Jenna adds after a while, “Remember that time I got wasted and ordered thirteen thousand latex balloons on Amazon? Bad choice.”

Tyler stares blankly at his reflection in the plate, saying, “At least  _my_  drunken decisions don’t end up fueling birthday parties for the next nine months.”

He laughs at her offended scoff and keeps laughing until his phone slips off his shoulder and falls in the sink. Whelp. There goes that.

<+><+><+>

“If you don’t press the damn button yourself, I’ll do it for you,” Debby leans over his shoulder and almost reaches the mouse before Josh shoves her off.

“Fine,” he shakes his head until the hair is his eyes flops back. He really needs a haircut, but first he has to sign up for this dating site before Debby does it for him and makes his interests something like, “lonely spinsters, stale bagels, and advanced calculus”.

Debby continues nudging him in the side until he clicks the “Find your matches” button and sits back while the page loads.

“Now was that so hard?” Debby says. She tugs at the back of his beanie, continuing, “Go get that haircut and I’ll finish your profile for you.”

She’s totally going to change his name to Erwin Maddox or something.

<+><+><+>

Once Jenna gets the email Tyler sent her explaining why he “hung up” in the middle of their conversation, she drives over to help see if she can salvage the phone.

“Nope, that’s gone,” she says. The moment he’d realized it had dropped, Tyler had fished it out of the slightly dirty dishwater, but it was too late. Jenna was the most tech-savvy person he knew (not that he’d tell Mark that) and if she couldn’t see a way to save it, there was no hope.

“Fuck,” he lets his head fall onto the table with a painful  _thunk_. Now he’d have to buy a new one, and he could barely afford the one he had now. “Arrrrgh.”

Jenna sympathetically pats him on the back. “You could always get one of those cheap ones from the drugstore?” She offers, “So you could save up for a better one later.”

Tyler groans again, but nods. Well, nods as much as he can, seeing as he’s still lying on the table.

“How’d that dating site thing go?” Jenna tries to quickly change subject, “Have you gotten any matches yet?”

He waves a hand in the general direction of the laptop on the couch and she goes over to pick it up, opening the lid to see it’s already open to the website.

“Hey, look,” she says when the page refreshes, “You already have a match!”

Tyler lifts his head from the table, albeit a little too fast. Massaging his neck, he takes the computer from her at looks at the profile opened.

“Dexter Richardson?” He wonders, “Sounds like a high school English teacher name.”

Jenna looks a little put off by the name too, but she forges on. “Well, look at his interests,” she clicks around on the page some more, “Um… theoretical physics? Ooh, he likes pop punk! Tyler, you like pop punk.”

He takes back the laptop when he hands it to him, still looking a little skeptical. He refreshes the page to see if there’s literally anyone else, only to find that the profile in front of him has changed almost completely.

“What the f-?” The url is still the same, only the rest of the info is completely different. Instead of Dexter Richardson, physics nerd, it’s the profile of a Josh Dun, who is apparently a drummer and works in Tyler’s favorite record store.

“Ooh, I like this one,” Jenna says.

“It’s the same guy?” He keeps clicking around, but this Josh Dun is still Tyler’s only match so far. It has to be the same person, he just can’t figure out how.

“How?” Jenna turns the screen towards herself more, checking it herself, “Did someone completely change his profile in the past two minutes?”

“I dunno, I’ll ask.” Tyler opens the chat button before he can even think about it, typing out a quick message.

> _so is this dex richardson or josh dun?_  
>  _or are u having an identity crisis?_

The reply comes back just as quickly.

> **more like an annoying roommate, but the second one** **  
> **are u actually tyler joseph, or do u have a meddlesome best friend too?****

Jenna laughs at that, knowing full well that the answer is technically yes. Tyler ignores her as he types back. Something about this guy made him want to keep talking, even though he still found the entire online dating thing stupid.

> _yes to the meddlesome friend, yes to the actual tyler_ _  
> _so did this roommate rope u into this or?__
> 
> **there was a little convincing on her part, yea** **  
> **but mostly im just tired of dating the same jack barakat**   **wannabes over and over**  
>  **u?****

“I think I’ll leave you two to it,” Jenna says as she stands up and grabs her purse from the other end of the table, “I’ll talk to you about the phone thing later, okay?”

Tyler doesn’t respond, too busy typing out another message to this Josh guy, so she just sighs and grabs her keys from by the door. She and Mark had been telling him to try this for ages, but it seemed like it was finally paying off. Unlocking her car, Jenna sends off a quick text to tell him all their needling had finally worked. She was going to take credit for this in any way she could. Whatever “this” was.

<+><+><+>

Josh would’ve closed his laptop if he thought it would do anything to stop her, but Debby always knew his password anyway. He left her to it, and by the time he got back from his haircut (they cut it too short,  _again_ , like always), his entire profile was completely different.

He’d just finished changing it back when a little ding alerted him to the message box that’d popped up in the bottom corner of his screen.

> _so is this dex richardson or josh dun?_ _  
> _or are u having an identity crisis?__

He laughs a little as he types back what he hopes is a clever enough response. Clicking through to their profile, he finds he’s talking to one Tyler Joseph from Columbus.  _Shit_ , Josh thinks to himself,  _he’s cute_.

“Ooh, he’s cute,” Debby says as she walks past on her way to the kitchen.

“Yeah,” Josh says faintly, distracted enough by reading this Tyler’s profile. Sure, he was still cute. And had all the same interests as Josh. And wrote music. And a 7,000 MMR on Mario Kart. Oh, and he had tattoos. Alright then. That's... great.

“Also totally your type,” comes Debby’s voice again, headed back to her room with a glass of orange juice in hand.

“Shhhh,” Josh only shushes her as he keeps typing.

<+><+><+>

> **my internet is rlly slow, would it b ok if we swapped #s and texted instead?**

They’d been going back and forth for three hours when Josh suggests it. Honestly, Tyler hadn’t even noticed that so much time had passed. He scrolled back up to the top of the chat box, and it was pretty amazing how many different things since then. Everything from Heathers to Home Alone to Hulk Hogan; nothing was safe.

> _funny thing actually… dropped my phone in the sink this morning, cant get a new one for like another month probs._ _  
> _what abt email?__
> 
> **u just wanna write a whole essay abt smoothies again, don’t u?**
> 
> _smoothies r the best food ever invented, theyre literally food u can drink_ _  
> _but no i just think it would b better, u know?__
> 
> **yea, i know**

The second the email address comes through, Tyler opens a new tab and starts writing. It does start off as about smoothies, true, but over the next few hours the emails turn into something more.

> _All I’m saying is why does it have to be so hard to get people to understand things? Why don’t we have a way to just stick thoughts into people’s heads? Not in a creepy mind control way, obviously, but just to be able to communicate things that can’t be put into words. If we could just transfer feelings to other people, there’d be no such thing as miscommunication anymore. I can’t help but think of how much_   ** _easier_** _it would be._
> 
> **If we could just show people things like that, we’d never have to use our words. Sure there’s a lot of stuff I wish I could just get people to _understand_ , but it’d be so easy to never have to be purposefully honest. There would be no point anymore, no more reason to confess, no way to lie. I’m not saying lying is good or anything, of course not, but it’s just like. If we didn’t have the option, how much would the truth really mean anymore?**

The next time Tyler looks up at the clock, he sees it’s already five o’clock. He doesn’t dwell on it for too long, but he wonders how one drunken decision could lead to probably the best thing in his life. He doesn’t mention it when he sends off an email saying he “should really go eat dinner now”. He doesn’t ask Josh to join him. But he wants to.

<+><+><+>

“When are you two going to finally have your _You’ve Got Mail_ moment and run into each other’s arms in slow motion?”

Sometimes Tyler wishes he wasn’t so close with his friends that they just showed up, ate all his food, and started digging into his love life.

> _One of the few things I genuinely hate about any kind of music community is how fame doesn’t change just performers, but fans too. And not just the whole superiority complex older fans get (which does suck, don’t get me wrong), but. I don’t know, it’s something like the purpose gets diluted the more people who join in. It’s like the genuineness goes away the moment people start coming in from having only heard them on the radio. I don’t wanna sound like one of those pretentious fans, but the difference between people finding music more organically versus hearing songs over and over on the radio is so dramatic._

“Back off the Doritos, Mark,” he slaps away the hand that had started sneaking towards the table out of in his peripheral vision. He’d been there only five minutes and already he’d claimed the remote and more than half of the couch. Tyler set up camp in one corner with his laptop, but with every second Mark was encroaching more and more on his territory.

“You haven’t watched the new Game of Thrones, have you?” Mark ignores the order and digs his hand into the bag, coming out with a handful of chips and covered in orange dust.

Tyler shakes his head no, relinquishing the DVR remote and returning to his new favorite activity: constantly refreshing his inbox and waiting for Josh to respond. Only three days into knowing him and already Josh was the part of his day Tyler looked forwards to the most.

> **I think a big part of that is how it’s hard to connect more with people in a large group. It’s like factions and stuff (throwback to history class), the bigger the group is, the more likely cliques and stuff like that will form. When there’s too many people to all be friends with, you get sucked into one group, and if there’s anything the French Revolution taught me it’s that too many groups always breeds drama. Sure, the music is still the most important part, but if the people surrounding it are rude then. It ruins it sometimes, you know?**

Tyler doesn’t notice that Mark has started leaning in over his shoulder until he says, “If only Jane Austen could see you now.”

“Dude, personal bubble,” he pushes Mark off, who doesn’t complain much, but stays close enough that he can still see the screen.

“I was serious,” he continues, “when’s the big rom-com scene coming up? Or have you already moved on to planning the wedding?”

“I’m scared,” Tyler blurts out.

He doesn’t mean to, and he hasn’t really thought about it before, but as soon as the words come out he can see it’s the only truth. He’s scared. He’s scared that he’ll meet Josh and that the Tyler in real life won’t live up to the Tyler Josh has gotten to know online, or that the online Josh isn’t the same as the real Josh, or that it’ll be incredibly awkward, or that any number of other things would go wrong and destroy what they’ve built through late night emails and confessing too much.

“I knew you’d get there eventually,” Mark says, throwing an arm around Tyler’s shoulder and shaking him out of his thoughts, “That’s why I’m over here. Well, that and the free beer.”

“Not free,” Tyler corrects, “Wait, you knew what?”

Setting down his bottle, Mark pauses the TV and turns to fully face Tyler. Neither of them is a big fan of extended eye contact, which immediately tips Tyler off to the fact that what he’s about to say is important.

“Whenever you don’t want to do something, it’s always because you’re scared.”

Tyler already knew that, but it helps to hear someone else say it.

“And I don’t mean that you’re a wimp or anything, don’t get me wrong. You’re just scared. Of, like… everything. Or everything that leads to change.”

“I know,” Tyler rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands, “I’m _always_ scared. Most of the time it doesn’t stop me but… something feels different about Josh, you know?”

Mark must know, as all he does is pat him on the shoulder and turn back to the TV.

> **Also, I don’t want to rush things (that’s the last thing I want to do tbh), but it would be really cool to meet you. I don’t know what else to say besides I think you’re really cool and I love talking to you and I think that would translate well to talking in person, you know? Lemme know if I’m crossing a line, though, I don’t wanna do that either. I’m bad with talking to pretty boys, if you couldn’t already tell.**
> 
> _Joshua Dun, there are very few things I would like more. (P.S. I’d practice in the mirror if I were you.)_

<+><+><+>

They decide to meet on neutral ground, so to speak, at a restaurant Jenna suggested.  It’s the most nerve-wracking Friday of Tyler’s entire life.

By the time he gets out of work, he’s started working up a nervous sweat, which is positively disgusting. He gets home to find Mark and Jenna already sitting on his couch, chatting about nothing important and waiting for him.

“Dude, you look terrible,” is the first thing Mark says. Jenna elbows him in the side, glaring at him briefly before finally looking up at Tyler.

“Never mind,” she corrects herself, “he’s right. You look like a mess, what’s wrong?”

“I am so nervous.” He kicks his shoes off and lies on the floor. His shoes have left a mark on the wall, he doesn’t have to look to know, and all he can do is groan into the carpet.

Jenna lets him wallow in self-pity for a few moments before she drags him up and leads him to the bathroom, Mark following behind them and wrapped up in his phone.

“Get in,” she turns around until she hears the sound of the water running and the shower curtain pulling closed. “I’m gonna go get you some clothes,” she continues, “Mark, you stay here and talk him down if he starts freaking out again.”

Mark nods, moving to sit on the counter and still dicking around on his phone. He wasn’t uninterested, no, nor was he uncaring, he just knew Tyler too well. He gave it about another minute before Tyler started questioning everything again.

“Why am I doing this?” Tyler says over the sound of the pounding water. He’d been suspiciously quiet for a while. At that Mark locks his phone and nods to himself again. Right on time.

“Because you’re actually into this Josh guy and, as far as I can tell, he’s into you too,” he states, “plain and simple.”

Another handful of silence, only broken by the sound of Tyler clicking the shampoo bottle closed.

“How come you’re such an asshole most of the time, but when it comes to stuff like this you’re always a hundred percent serious?”

Mark shrugs, even though he knows Tyler can’t see it. “Someone has to be,” he says, “now hurry up so we can veto whatever outfits Jenna’s come up with. That girl uses too much animal print for her own good.”

> **I’m more than a little nervous, but that’s a good thing, right? Right now I’m typing so fast that every other word is a typo and it’s taking me twice as long to go back and fix them all. Hopefully the amount of mistakes I’m making right now will balance any mistakes I might make tonight. Seven o’clock? I’ll be the one with the pink hair.**

<+><+><+>

“As best friend, I’m pretty sure you’re contractually obligated to _help me_.”

The last part comes out as a pathetic groan as Josh flops down onto his bed, next to where Debby is standing at his open dresser.

“Has anyone ever told you that you own too many tank tops?” She asks as she gets up to flip through the hangers in his closet, “Seriously, all your clothes are either sweatshirts or tank tops.”

Josh shrugs, which is kind of hard to do still lying down, but he manages. He stays lying there until he feels the weight of something being thrown at the back. Looking over his shoulder, he sees that it’s a sweatshirt and a pair of black skinny jeans that he was pretty sure were dirty.

“You don’t have any clean jeans,” Debby confirms for him, “which I’m not sure is possible since you have like four million of the same pair, but alright.”

“So get dressed,” she continues when Josh still doesn’t seem to be moving any time in the future, “I got you the Frankenstein sweatshirt because one, it’s supposed to be kind of cold tonight, and two, you look cute in it.”

With that she leaves, saying over her shoulder, “Let me know when you’re ready to do your hair, you know it takes you forever.”

He stares at the pile of clothes and psychs himself out for a moment when he realizes these were the clothes he was going to be meeting Tyler for the first time in.

“Stop overthinking it and just get dressed,” Debby pokes her head back around the corner. Thank god he has her.

> _If only you could see what a wreck I am right now, maybe you wouldn’t feel so nervous. If anyone’s going to make mistakes tonight it’s me. You don’t see it as much when I have time to fix any mistakes now, but in real time I’ll be just as bad, if not worse. Seven o’clock, see you there._

<+><+><+>

He’s only been sitting for maybe five minutes and already Tyler’s memorized every part of the menu, counted the cracks in the vinyl of the booth (there’s seventeen), fended off the waitress twice, and tied and retied his shoelaces more times than he could count. He was really nervous, to say the least.

“Tyler?” He bangs his knee on the table, he sits up so fast, and slides around a little on the vinyl seat as he tries to turn around. When he does, he stops breathing for a second.

“Josh.”

“Yeah,” Josh sits across from him in the booth and laughs a little. Tyler stops breathing again. He really needs to stop doing that; breathing is important to sustaining life and sustaining life is important to seeing Josh and seeing Josh is still so new but he really needs to keep doing that.

“Sorry,” Tyler shakes his head once he realizes he’s been silently staring at Josh for too long to pass off as normal, “it’s just…”

“No, I get it,” the smile Josh gives him is nothing but beatific, “I mean, we’ve only known each other for a week? But it’s weird to finally see you in person. Cool, but weird.”

Tyler nods, not knowing what to say. The chasm between how easy it was to send three page emails and how hard it was to even make small talk right there was disorienting and annoying.

Luckily for him, the waitress chooses that moment to stop by and take their orders. It doesn’t take a lot (read: any) convincing to get Josh to split the largest thing of onion rings they can buy, which makes Tyler feel a little less nervous for some reason. Probably something about how they’re not as incompatible as the awkward silence would seem to suggest.

They make awkward small talk until the food arrives, at which point they immediately start arguing over who gets how many onion rings. It’s not a real argument, though, something Tyler is glad to discover. It’s more like something you would hear out of the old married couple who lives next door to you and can never decide who’s going to bring in the newspaper. He likes that feeling.

After that the conversation flows easily, just as varied and interesting as every email they’d traded had been. Every little thing about Josh that had come across online was the same in person, which Tyler was more than grateful for. It was just as easy talking to him as it was putting his fingers on the laptop keys.

The only solid difference was how deep the topics went. They had come to an unspoken agreement that maybe first dates weren’t the time for discourse on human dependence on intimacy. Instead, they stuck to slightly more surface topics like new music releases and the wonders of Xbox, sometimes dipping into things like media deception. Stuff like that had somehow become a staple for their relationship (whatever it was) and Tyler wouldn’t really trade that for anything in the world.

It was nice to know they were both still the same people, though. That was a plus.

<+><+><+>

“Blink-182 is _not_ overrated, you take that back.”

Tyler holds up his hands defensively, still holding the Passion Pit EP he’d found in the bottom of the bargain bin. After they’d finished their food, Josh hadn’t wanted to go quite yet, so they’d walked the couple of blocks to the record store he worked at.

“I can’t help that they were totally overblown by _Enema of the State_ ,” he says, reading the back of his CD and trying to look nonchalant. The grin threatening to break through was hard to hold in, but he can’t help it, it’s fun to watch Josh get riled up. He looks really cute when he starts doing that pouty thing.

Josh throws his head back and groans frustratedly and Tyler has to stop his mind from going too far with that.

“That’s not the point,” he gently puts back the _Take Off Your Pants and Jacket_ vinyl that had started this whole conversation, “Because they blew up with _Enema_ , everything they put out after was just marked off as ‘more pop punk’ and no one _really_ listened to it. I mean, ‘First Date’? ‘Ghost on the Dancefloor’? Come on, you have to admit, they were amazing.”

Tyler gives up on containing his smile and laughs when Josh subconsciously stomps his foot like a toddler having a tantrum.

“I’m sorry,” he laughs when Josh weakly glares at him, “You’re just really cute.”

Tyler doesn’t even have time to regret saying it when Josh’s face starts heating up and he turns away to fiddle with the plastic sleeve of the closest record. “Yeah, well...” Josh mumbles to the rows of records, “You’re… cuter…”

Tyler almost wants to pretend he doesn’t hear it, but he apparently has lost all sense of self-control and his grin widens to the point where he’s afraid it looks unsettling.

Apparently it isn’t, because Josh looks over at him and smiles shyly in return. Picking up his stack of CD’s (half of which are recommendations from Tyler), Josh keeps smiling as he walks to stand right in front of Tyler and something in the atmosphere shifts subtly.

All of a sudden the light seems more yellow, not as harsh, and Tyler feels like he’s swimming in molasses. He’s aware of the air in his lungs and how loud his breathing is when Josh leans in, resting one hand on his shoulder, and softly kisses his cheek.

It’s over as soon as it begins, too soon for Tyler to even really process it, and Josh pulls back to say, “Come on, we can use my employee discount,” and walks away toward the counter. Tyler has to take a second, closing his eyes and breathing out a laugh before turning around and following Josh with a more gentle smile than before.

<+><+><+>

Josh is watching his shoes kicking the wet pavement when Tyler says it.

“That wasn’t so bad, right? I mean, that didn’t go as bad as it could’ve?”

It breaks the weird tension that’s settled around them on their walk to Tyler’s apartment and Josh is grateful.

“True, it wasn’t terrible,” he nods in agreement and sneaks a look at Tyler out of the corner of his eye. It’s surreal to be even standing next to him and Josh keeps having to stare at him just to make to this was really happening.

When he looks over, however, he finds that Tyler was already looking at him, swinging his bag of stuff he shouldn’t’ve bought at the record store with a gentle smile on his face.

“It wasn’t terrible,” Josh repeats, smiling himself.

“Would you go as far as to say it was good?” Tyler comes to a stop outside of what Josh can only assume is his apartment building. If Josh was better at words, he’d probably say the look on his face was something between roguish and shy, sheepish and playful and self-conscious and nervous.

But Josh isn’t, so all he can think of is how cute Tyler looks under the streetlight, how warm he’d felt earlier under his lips, and the little flash of hopefulness in his eyes.

After realizing that, Josh can’t stop himself from just leaning in and kissing him, pulled by some magnetic force towards the cautious smile on his face until he can feel it with his own.

There’s no delay between the second their lips touch and Tyler starts kissing back, a push and pull like the only thing keeping him from completely latching onto Josh is the tidal pull of the streak of moon overhead. The tiny voice in the back of Josh’s head that isn’t totally overwhelmed already laments the fact that he hadn’t done this earlier.

That voice shuts up when he feels one of Tyler’s hands thread itself through the hair at the back of his neck and holding him closer. His hands automatically comes up to rest on Tyler’s waist, tugging at the soft fabric of his button-up when the wind picks up and sneaks down the back of his shirt.

Just as he’s almost run out of air, Tyler pulls back just enough to breathe.

“It’s getting kind of cold out here, do you maybe wanna go upstairs?” He asks into the inch between their mouths. Josh compulsively licks his lips and ends up just grazing Tyler’s, which is enough to solidify the answer in his head.

“Definitely,” he breathes out and the grin he gets in return makes him stumble on the first two steps up to the building. The wind blows a little harder, but Josh still feels warm in every part of his body that was touching Tyler’s. Those same pinpoints of warmth draw him towards Tyler, following him up the half-lit stairs.

<+><+><+>

They aren’t even fully inside Tyler’s front door when Josh can’t contain himself anymore.

“Mmph-,“ Tyler starts to say something before Josh’s lips immediately cover his, “Wait, my shoelace is caught in the door.”

“What?” Josh leans back slightly, not letting go of where he’s cradling the back of Tyler’s neck. Were it literally any other circumstance, Tyler would be happy to let him keep doing that until the end of time, but at this rate he was probably going to fall over if either of them moved.

“My shoelace,” Tyler repeats himself, “It’s caught in the door.”

“Oh.” Josh steps back so Tyler can pull off his shoes and throw them in the direction of the pile in the corner. He figures he should do the same, unzipping the side of his weird boots and putting them next to the door somewhat neater. He’d wanted to look his best, but if he was being honest, he really didn’t think he’d get this far. Hoped, yes, but not thought. Not that he was complaining.

“Are we good now?”

“Yes, totally good, keeping going.”

That’s all it takes for Josh to dive back in, nipping at Tyler’s lips like he’d wanted to do outside. His hands lace themselves together behind Tyler’s neck and he doesn’t care anymore that he’s out of breath. Anyway, Tyler’s more important than breathing.

Tyler retaliates in kind, letting his hands skim the edge of Josh’s sweatshirt until he literally feel the heat radiating off of him. Mouthing down his neck, he feels the breath Josh sucks in when his fingers finally find skin.

Josh’s hands on the back of his neck burn, like they’re trying to scorch his very fingerprints into Tyler’s skin, and all Tyler can think of is how very okay with that he’d be. It isn’t enough to scare him, barely audible in his head over the sound of both of their heavy breathing, but it sticks to the inside of his head and piles on to all the other things he’s learning.

As he pulls back to kiss Josh again, Tyler contemplates how exactly to invite Josh to his bedroom without sounding like a total creep. Right now, though, it’s enough to have hands hot on his neck and skin hot under his hands, and he lets their tongues tangle together -

\- until there’s a banging at the door.

“Tyler, let me in and tell me how the date went!”

Tyler, regretfully, pulls himself away as Jenna’s voice comes through the thin wood of the door.

“That’s Jenna, isn’t it?” Josh says, keeping his grip on Tyler’s collar as he leans his head on his shoulder. It takes a lot of self-restraint to not get distracted by his hot breath on his neck, but Tyler tries. He tries so hard.

“Yeah,” he answers. His hands are still halfway up Josh’s sweatshirt and it would be _so_ easy to just ignore her and instead move further into the apartment (like maybe the bedroom?), but he owes her for putting up with all his angst-y teen bullshit, “I gotta…”

“Talk to her, I know,” Josh finishes for him, but still makes no move towards peeling them apart, “I’d hate you so much if I didn’t think you were so cute.”

“Two seconds, Jenna, I swear,” he calls over Josh’s shoulder, not willing to let go either. He tilts his head until its resting atop Josh’s trying to steady his breathing and willing himself to at least not look so turned on.

“…He’s in there, isn’t he?” Jenna asks through the door.

“Hi, Jenna,” Josh stands up straighter so he isn’t speaking directly into Tyler’s shoulder.

“Oh, hi Josh!” She says, “Not the way I thought I’d be meeting you, but it’s nice to know you’re actually a real person. I’m just gonna leave now, in that case. Tyler, you better call me in the morning, though.”

“Sure, right, fine,” Tyler rushes to get it out because Josh has started carding his fingers through the short hair at the back of his neck and now he’s tugging on it and _okay_. He hears Jenna’s laugh as she walks away, but the thought is quickly pushed into the back of his mind as Josh’s lips find his neck. He has more important things to pay attention to.

<+><+><+>

When Josh wakes up, his first thought is _nice_.

Opening his eyes and blinking at the bright ceiling, he turns his head slightly to see Tyler asleep on his shoulder and his second thought is _double_ _nice_.

Then, of course, he yawns, chest expanded enough to jostle Tyler into awareness. He feels a little twinge of regret before he realizes that Tyler waking up is even cuter than Tyler sleeping.

“Hey,” his voice is rough with disuse, “good morning.”

Tyler is decidedly _not_ an early bird and he blinks twice before deciding it’s too bright out and burying his face back in the sheets. It was too precious for Josh to handle.

“You’re too precious for me to handle,” he says, pressing a dry kiss to the top of Tyler’s bedhead. “I hope that’s allowed.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Tyler says into the soft cotton, but when he turns to look at Josh he’s already smiling. “As long as you know you’re just as precious to me.”

He pretends to not be as fond as he looks when Tyler leans forward just the tiniest bit to bump their noses together. Maybe he did.

<+><+><+>

“Aren’t you glad now that we got you drunk?” Jenna asks, after Josh leaves for work and she’s bribed Tyler with enough donuts to get the entire story out of him. He’d managed to fend her off until eleven, at which point she’d found out from Mark that Josh had already left.

“I don’t think that was really up to you,” he says as he licks his fingers clean of powdered sugar. He doesn’t want to get anything on Josh’s sweatshirt, but it’s warm and it smells like lilies and sandalwood and _Josh_ and it’s been less than a day and he’s already turned into a total sap.

“I know” She takes another sip of coffee. “But you’re glad, right? You’re happy?”

“Yeah.” It’s not a question for once. “Yeah, I really think I am.”

<+><+><+>

 

> _jenna left a box of donuts here_
> 
> **two minutes. don’t eat them all before i get there.**
> 
> _no promises…_
> 
> _xo_

**Author's Note:**

> when i realized this was exactly 6000 words, i punched the air really hard. ao3 fucked that up a little but w/e, now my shoulder hurts.
> 
> tumblr @[findyourmonsters](http://photocomfort.co.vu)


End file.
